How Arvind Kejriwal committed political suicide

Kejriwal needed to harness this force to build a solid foundation for a citizen-government in the country’s capital. He then needed to take this model across the country to, say, the top metros and extremely small states such as Haryana.

By BV Rao

Arvind Kejriwal is an engineer. As a man of science, he must have studied the big bang theory.

For the non-science aam janta like me, the NatGeo website explains this theory in simple terms: "A Belgian priest named Georges Lemaitre first suggested the big bang theory in the 1920s when he theorized that the universe began from a single primordial atom...This theory was born of the observation that other galaxies are moving away from our own at great speed, in all directions, as if they had all been propelled by an ancient explosive force. Scientists can't be sure exactly how the universe evolved after the big bang. Many believe that as time passed and matter cooled, more diverse kinds of atoms began to form, and they eventually condensed into the stars and galaxies of our present universe."

Why this speed lesson in science, you might wonder. What's the connection between the big bang and Arvind Kejriwal? There is. Science has no answer yet for what existed before the big bang or what created the conditions that caused it. But the various galaxies, universes, solar systems and ultimately the earth as we know it today, evolved, atom by atom, over billions of years. They didn't come up instantly. It is this basic lesson in evolution that Kejriwal forgot in his hurry to build a national political party.

The Aam Aadmi Party's stunning show in the Delhi assembly elections and his ascension to the chief minister's office — which became his as a result of the political hara-kiri of the Big Two parties — was the political equivalent of the big bang.

After this big bang, Kejriwal needed to allow his own politics, his party and his administrative skills to evolve into one cohesive alternative representing one billion outliers — the aam janata who had been knocked clean out of the political system.

Failed to Grow Organically

Unlike in the real big bang, we know the energy for Kejriwal's big bang came from the Anna movement. This movement was the manifestation of the helpless citizens' vexation with corruption and the tremendous hunger for change.

Kejriwal needed to harness this force to build a solid foundation for a citizen-government in the country's capital. He then needed to take this model across the country to, say, the top metros and extremely small states such as Haryana.

This way, AAP would have evolved organically, naturally. Instead, Kejriwal went fishing for another big bang; national elections, no less. So, just two weeks after he chided his party for its vaulting ambition and stupidly talking of contesting 400 Lok Sabha seats, he chucked everything to contest 434 seats to Parliament!

Either he took temporary leave of his senses or they were so numbed — by success — into believing that the aam janta, the life-force of his party, was gullible along with being ordinary. Big bangs, as he now knows, happen. They cannot be manufactured in the cottage industries of Sivakasi or, as in this case, Varanasi.

Ambition, rather than opposition, forced him to abandon the citizen-government experiment even before it took off, his stock dived. The inconsistencies in his positions began to be amplified, ably aided by his own grand reversals, shifting goalposts and changing targets — from Congress and corruption to communalism and Corporate Modi. This inexplicable change in targets and his questionable decision to quit and contest Varanasi cost him dearly.

The logic for quitting was that his party needed him across the country and he couldn't be tied down in Delhi. The end result: he got tied down in Varanasi and also lost Delhi! Perhaps he could have achieved what he achieved in Varanasi by contesting there as the chief minister of Delhi. A battle between two chief ministers...and he could still have been holding Delhi! Being too clever by half is the most aam blunder we can commit.

No More Big Bangs

Kejriwal was so engrossed in playing the confuse-and-confound games with his political foes that he fooled himself into believing he was a magician. As the campaign unfolded, he started looking more and more like the average politician: calling names, hurling accusations, mouthing lies and half-truths and even wanting to be the new messiah of minority politics. His believability quotient nosedived and the magic wore off.

At the level of the political history of nations, big bangs happen once in a few decades. Kejriwal has to reconcile to the fact that there will be no more big bangs for him. He will have to rebuild brick by brick.

Instead, if he goes for another big, greedy kill — not that there's anything on the horizon — the AAP runs the risk of becoming a blip on the political radar of India. If he forgets this science lesson, his grandma's story on the man with the golden goose, will start ringing in his ears. In this story, he will be the one who killed the golden goose.